Pragmatism/Realism Entanglement
Actually written NOVEMBER 18, 2005
If pragmatism means “believing what you want to believe” and realism means “believing what is real”, then what describes the case in which you want to believe what is real? Normally, the two epistemologies clash mutually and exclusively. But for the case in question, they seem to coexist quite peacefully. Peacefully as the case may be, this coexistence also creates some fascinating, even bizarre, implications.
I begin with a terminology note. In this writing I wish to call this coexistent case “the overlap”. While I have heard of something called “pragmatic realism”, I’m not familiar enough with its true meaning to risk misapplying that term here.
Now let’s return to the peacefulness of the coexistence. Is it really all that peaceful? Well, depends on how deep you look at the situation. If you just take it for granted, it does remain peaceful. There’s absolutely no real problem with it. Go ahead, believe what is real, and do so because you want to. No need to bother figuring out whether you are actually a realist or a pragmatist. You are happily both as you function within this overlap. In fact, you’ll get into circular-logic trouble as soon as you try to figure out whether you are more fundamentally one or the other. But let’s examine the trouble.
Your realist side will object like so: “Hey! The fact that you ignore your motivations (ignore your wants) and focus on reality in the formation of your beliefs means you are more fundamentally a realist.” And your pragmatist side will rebut like so: “Yo! The fact that you practice realism only because you want to makes you more fundamentally a pragmatist.”
There is an apparent paradox implied here. So let’s dig it up and look at it. It’s called the “desire for desire-free cognition paradox”. In realism, desire is dismissed while cognizing. But we desire realism. So in a crucial sense, we desire the absence of desire (we desire apathy). The paradoxical aspect is this: If you manage to achieve a state of desire-void-ness (apathy), you can no longer claim to want this state. Conversely, if you want this state, you can no longer claim to have achieved it.
If you feel like a con job has just been attempted on you, I agree. Desire for desire-free cognition isn’t really a paradox. This fake paradox glosses over a crucial fact. Desire and desire-free cognition can coexist. You just have to keep them separate. And one of the most effective assurances that you’ll keep them separate is to want them separate. This peculiar wanting is a meta-level desire, i.e. a desire about other desires. When a meta-level desire specifies that other desires shall not sway cognition, it is the sort of desire that is most harmonious with desire-free cognition. Think of this meta-level desire as the “cop” who prevents “ordinary citizen” desires from committing crimes of cognition contamination.
With this in mind, let’s return to the issue of deciding whether someone in the overlap is more fundamentally the pragmatist or the realist. The issue of separating desire from cognition will favor realism in the overlap. Outside the overlap, ordinary pragmatism usually claims that we can’t really separate desire from cognition. Only realism claims we can. To clarify pragmatism here, it’s not that pragmatists believe desire and cognition are one and the same, but that desire must always determine belief in every case. There is no “cop” protecting cognition, not even just a little bit. The reason, according to pragmatists, is that cognition fails to grasp reality anyway. Cognition is not really cognition as understood by realism. Instead, cognition is social practice, linguistic convention, or the like. Likewise, social practice and linguistic convention are shaped by the aggregate of our desires. Ultimately, cognition, all of it, is shaped by desire.
Pragmatism loses all this in the overlap. Where outside the overlap pragmatism gives desire exclusive causal primacy in the content of cognition, inside the overlap pragmatism retreats to giving desire only causal primacy in the motivation for cognition. Inside the overlap, pragmatism had to retreat quite a bit to accommodate realism.
But realism gave a few things up also.
Outside the overlap, realists don’t like the idea that their “citizen desires” could be policed by some special, meta-level “cop” desire. To most realists, desires are all of one kind, the kind that will screw up cognition. It is therefore folly to trust a desire with the job of policing the rest of them. That’s like selecting a cop from a population of criminals. (I’ve noticed that desires generally make realists rather uncomfortable.) Therefore, realists often substitute a better cop: volition.
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